January 13, 2026
That was President Trump today in Detroit talking about all the economic successes of his first year in this term. But is there really no inflation and did the United States really see the highest growth we’ve ever had? Let’s start with the inflation part because we just got some brand new data on inflation today.
Today’s consumer price index report for the month of December does not back up with President Trump just said. And remember – this report is coming from his own administration. The report found….yes – we absolutely still have inflation. In fact in the month of December consumer prices were 2.7% higher than they were in December of 2024. Now – if we want to get technical – when President Biden left office in January of 2024 and president trump came back into office, inflation was 3%– so yes – technically the number has dropped…but only by point-three percent from last year. You can decide for yourself if that equates to “no inflation.”
It’s worth noting that today’s inflation report found the costs for all of the main categories that we all need to live – food, energy and shelter – were all *up*. Food overall was up 3.1%. Overall energy was up 2.3% year over year. But when you look under that hood, it’s true – gasoline for your car was down 3.4% between December of 2025 and December of 2024 but natural gas for your home was up 10.8% year over year. And when it comes to shelter — that was also up –again—3.2% year over year.
I want to focus on food for a second – because obviously we all need food and you’ve been talking a lot recently about how expensive groceries are. You’re right…there’s something going on there. According to today’s report between November and December of this year food prices shot up 0.7%. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot but for food it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.
Obviously it’s something that the president is watching too. On the campaign trail he said he would bring down grocery prices on day one if he was elected and here we are more than a year later and they are actually up more than 3%. Perhaps that’s why he said this today.
I also want to address what the president said about the United States growth. Trump says it’s the highest growth we’ve ever had in history. I’m not sure what he’s talking about. That’s not accurate – the highest GDP number we’ve seen in the last 50 years wwere under president Lyndon B Johnson with an annual GDP growth of 5.3%. In the more modern era the highest was under President Clinton when the annual GDP growth was 3.9%. But President Trump has had a fairly good year. The most recent Trump GDP numbers we have are from the third quarter of 2025 and yes that number was good – GDP was 4.3%. But that number was up not necessarily because we’re seeing all this production and growth in America – but according to the report it happened because imports have drastically been reduced due to Trump’s tariffs, and because government spending is *up* mostly in the defense sector. The last reason why GDP was up was because of increased consumer spending.
Read the CPI report here.
Watch Trump’s comments here.
